Rescue boats try to locate passengers of a tourist boat that sunk on the Volga, on Monday, July 11, 2011 . (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

(Newser)
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The death toll from the sinking of a Russian cruise ship in the Volga River has ballooned to more than 100, and a great many of those were children. Minutes before the boat sank, the children had been brought together in an interior play area, the New York Times reports, making them less likely to survive than the adults above deck. “Practically no children made it out,” one surviving mother said. “There were many children on the boat, very many.”

She said her own 10-year-old daughter had slipped from her grasp as she tried to pull her out of a window. “I held onto her as long as possible,” she said. “We were all buried alive in the boat like a metal coffin.” Dmitri Medvedev held a news conference and blamed the catastrophe on poor maintenance. “The vessel was in poor condition,” he said. “The number of old rust tubs which we have sailing is exorbitant.”